New stew mac heat stick

[peter meyer]

Has anyone  tryed the new Stew Mac heat stick method of neck removal?

[Paul Breen]

http://fretsnet.ning.com/forum/topics/to-those-using-a-pressure-coo...

Read everything by Mark A. Kane

[peter meyer]

Thanks Paul I'll check it out

[Ron Frazier]

ordered the new soldering iron because they did not make the rod for my Weller gun.

They sent the gun fast but they forgot to include the stick.    I got the stick Friday and today I tried it and it did not work!

It was a junk guitar and  broke the small drill bit but got it out ok.  I heated and heated but no luck.

Then I wondered what kind of neck it was so I removed the fingerboard and found it was a doweled joint!

Then bored new holes and had no problem removing it! 

next guitar will be a dove tail joint ! 

I have a bunch of guitars to work on. a old parler guitar will be the next.

Ron

[Ron Frazier]

next was a old Kay. I heated and heated but no luck. The heater was in so long it had to have heated the wood so I reached in the sound hole and I had missed the neck block and the heater was out in the open so I burnted my fingeres  again rebored the holes  where they shold and removed it OK so next is a 1972 martin  0017 and all went well!\ except pulling the gun out of the hole I touched the gun again. Yep burned them again!

now I will sharpen my chisel and put some back together.

I am glad I spent the $200.00

A wiser  RON

[peter meyer]

Sorry for your burns but i do have admit  i chuckled abit

having done similar things .ive yet to purchase  the heat stick but your reports are encouraging  

[Ron Frazier]

the stick dosent have to be copper.  I think I will try some hevay wire  wire it to the out side of the gun .  I think it would work. I gtuess I dont have to try any thing else do I? 

Ron

[Keith Somerville]

I was thinking this. You can get a 3mm steel rod for pennies?

[peter meyer]

Well i just got in a nice early 60,s 0021-NY in the shop that needs a reset and i think im going to try this new method

so are guys saying that you can use that you can use other material for the heat stick it self?

[Ian Pender]

The heat stick is based on something that Ian Davlin (who goes by Martinluthierking on instagram) came up with, using cartridge heaters to pull necks without steam. Here's a link to a video on his website, showing it in action:

http://www.luthing.com/steamless-neck-re-set-ian-davlin/

[Tai Fu]

DO NOT use brass or any other copper alloy to make it.

I tried to make a heatstick with brass and it wasn't conductive enough, and it turns out any copper alloys except for copper itself is a very poor conductor (I had assumed that copper alloys are at least a little less conductive compared to copper).

So I turned a piece of copper on a lathe and made a heat stick and it worked. However the copper is quite soft when heated to soldering iron temperature, it bent quite easily. I don't know what Stewmac used but copper does not "harden" like steel does when heated and quenched, not to mention the temperature of soldering iron would destroy any temper anyways. I had assumed it was phosphor bronze (because the stick looked similar) but Phosphor bronze has very little conductivity compared to copper, like 7%.